Any discussion about GNOME vs. KDE is sure to end in tears. It's basically impossible to discuss which of these two Free desktop environments is better than the other, mostly because they cater to different types of people, with different needs and expectatotions. As such, Bruce Byfield decided to look at the two platforms from a different perspective: if we consider their developmental processes, which of the two is most likely to be more successful in the coming years?

There's nothing at all to argue about. Install GnomeDo on any desktop environment and you never need anything else. GnomeDo ftw

I think GnomeDo is one of the strongest reasons not to use Gnome. It's based on Mono. What's the point in running .NET stuff on Linux? If you want to run .NET stuff better use Windows.
Why go for the surrogate (Mono) when you can use the real thing (.NET)?

Thing is, most people get confused over what is part of GNOME and what is part of their distribution's standard GNOME environment. Hense these misconceptions that GNOME-Do is part of GNOME standard and that GNOME depends on Mono, etc etc...

I think GnomeDo is one of the strongest reasons not to use Gnome. It's based on Mono.

Yer, but as much as I've had a go at Mono around here, purely from a developer point of view, what else on Earth are they going to use? Like it or lump it, Mono is currently the path of least resistance to creating anything remotely functional with Gnome or GTK today. Beyond that, there is nothing there for developers that is acceptable.

Whether Mono is the right choice from a 'Trojan Horse' point of view or even if running everything in the CLR is the right way to go are other questions entirely.

Yer, but as much as I've had a go at Mono around here, purely from a developer point of view, what else on Earth are they going to use? Like it or lump it, Mono is currently the path of least resistance to creating anything remotely functional with Gnome or GTK today. Beyond that, there is nothing there for developers that is acceptable.

For now I would agree with you. Right now Mono is the best path for rapid development of Gnome/Gtk apps. Maybe Vala will change that soon.

"There's nothing at all to argue about. Install GnomeDo on any desktop environment and you never need anything else. GnomeDo ftw

I think GnomeDo is one of the strongest reasons not to use Gnome. It's based on Mono. What's the point in running .NET stuff on Linux? If you want to run .NET stuff better use Windows.
Why go for the surrogate (Mono) when you can use the real thing (.NET)? "

Mono is not .NET. I am sick and tired of hearing this BS line. Mono is C# and the CLR with its own libraries. .NET compatibility is included but nobody develops .NET applications on Linux. They develop Mono applications. Mono hatred is based on ignorance and nothing else. GnomeDO, Banshee, Beagle, F-Spot, and other first class Mono applications share only the C# language and the CLR with Microsoft's product and they are both ECMA standards. Class libraries are entirely different and they are the bulk of what makes up Mono.

Mono is not .NET. I am sick and tired of hearing this BS line. Mono is C# and the CLR with its own libraries.

You cannot separate the two, which is what Mono's weak FAQ attempts to do. You can create your own libraries within Microsoft's implementations, but that doesn't stop you needing the pre-requisites - a .Net environment to run them in.

From another standpoint as far as Microsoft is concerned, and with everything I have ever seen filed by them over .Net, you are deemed to be covered if you are running within a compatible CLR as per the ECMA specifications - regardless of what libraries you use. That means Mono. In addition, the ECMA does not stop them ever filing something over those specifications in the future, which is why the ECMA specifies you need to license them under RAND terms for as long as they are ECMA standards.

Now, the obvious question is: How long will that RAND license last? That's the problem. It certainly isn't forever I can tell you that, and nothing makes it so.

Think the ECMA provides protection for you? Think again. That's what a lot of people have difficulty with, and it's an issue that has never been addressed. For open source projects they just can't live with that kind of uncertainty.

Class libraries are entirely different and they are the bulk of what makes up Mono.

No, they are not, so please stop regurgitating the Mono FAQ. It is wrong. It really doesn't matter what libraries you use, you can be covered with one brush by using the CLR, CLS and anything covered by the ECMA because that's what you need for those class libraries to be worth anything. They are very much a part of the .Net environment.

You cannot separate the two, which is what Mono's weak FAQ attempts to do. You can create your own libraries within Microsoft's implementations, but that doesn't stop you needing the pre-requisites - a .Net environment to run them in.

This is entirely incorrect. You don't need a .NET environment to run Mono. I think you are confusing terminologies. .NET is an implementation of the C# language/CLR with class libraries meant specifically for Windows. Mono is an implementation of the C# language/CLR with TOTALLY DIFFERENT class libraries other than the few bits that have been standardized. Yes Mono also ships .NET compatible libraries but this isn't the basis for any GNOME applications.

Think the ECMA provides protection for you? Think again. That's what a lot of people have difficulty with, and it's an issue that has never been addressed. For open source projects they just can't live with that kind of uncertainty.

Why single out Mono then? Javascript is an ECMA standard. There is nothing preventing ANYONE from claiming a patent in Javascript yet I haven't heard a single person make any noise about that or any other ECMA standarized language. You're tying to pretend this is about ECMA standards when it's really about your hatred of Microsoft. Why else single out Mono?

No, they are not, so please stop regurgitating the Mono FAQ. It is wrong. It really doesn't matter what libraries you use, you can be covered with one brush by using the CLR, CLS and anything covered by the ECMA because that's what you need for those class libraries to be worth anything. They are very much a part of the .Net environment.

Do you even know what .NET consists of? A majority of it cannot even be included in Mono because it is Windows specific in so many areas. I wish you would stop your blatant misrepresentation of Mono when it is obvious you haven't even glanced at the .NET class libraries. If your worry is that Microsoft will call out patent claims then you might as well hide under a rock because anyone can get hit with software patent claims at any time, it isn't a Mono specific threat.

Why single out Mono then? Javascript is an ECMA standard. There is nothing preventing ANYONE from claiming a patent in Javascript yet I haven't heard a single person make any noise about that or any other ECMA standarized language.

A description of the difference between Mono and ECMAscript is (essentially) to be found here:

JavaScript was originally developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape under the name Mocha, later LiveScript, and finally renamed to JavaScript. In December 1995, Sun Microsystems and Netscape announced JavaScript in a press release. In March 1996 Netscape Navigator 2.0 was out, featuring support for JavaScript.

Due to the wide-spread success of JavaScript as a client-side scripting language for web pages, Microsoft developed a compatible dialect of the language, naming it JScript to avoid trademark issues. JScript added new date methods to fix the non-Y2K-friendly methods in JavaScript, which were based on java.util.Date. JScript was included in Internet Explorer 3.0, released in August 1996.

Netscape submitted JavaScript to Ecma International for standardization; the work on the specification, ECMA-262, began in November 1996. The first edition of ECMA-262 was adopted by the ECMA General Assembly of June 1997.

ECMAscript is (essentailly) Netscape/Sun IP, adopted also by Microsoft.

.NET is Microsoft IP, some parts of which have been submitted by Microsoft as ECMA standards. It is vitally important to keep in mind the qualifier "parts of which".

Since Netscape donated their code to open source, I would imagine that there is some kind of accompanying pledge which prevents other parties from claiming after-the-fact patents in Javascript and other related technologies.

.NET is Microsoft IP, some parts of which have been submitted by Microsoft as ECMA standards. It is vitally important to keep in mind the qualifier "parts of which".

Since Netscape donated their code to open source, I would imagine that there is some kind of accompanying pledge which prevents other parties from claiming after-the-fact patents in Javascript and other related technologies.

You assume but you don't know. In fact there is nothing preventing anyone from claiming a patent right on JS. Novell does in fact have an agreement with Microsoft to avoid lawsuits pertaining to Mono. You just made it more clear that this is about your feelings towards Microsoft and not about the ECMA's lack of protection, or any real "patent trap".

This is entirely incorrect. You don't need a .NET environment to run Mono. I think you are confusing terminologies.

Hmmmmm, no. I'm not. You need at least part of the .Net environment in order to get Mono running or to use any of those class libraries you say are all so neatly independent.

Mono is an implementation of the C# language/CLR with TOTALLY DIFFERENT class libraries other than the few bits that have been standardized.

No. Like I said, stop trying to separate class libraries and things that you believe to have been 'standardised'. Whether you add your own class libraries and namespaces to an implementation of the .Net environment really doesn't matter.

You also don't seem to realise that the ECMA specifications specify very little that you will need to get a CLR actually running, with the classes that you need - rather like Rotor. Rotor was absolutely useless for running any practical applications with the framework. Mono has had to reverse engineer a reasonable amount to get to where it is.

Yes Mono also ships .NET compatible libraries but this isn't the basis for any GNOME applications.

The .Net compatible libraries aren't at issue. They are libraries with names and no more.

Why single out Mono then? Javascript is an ECMA standard.

Because JavaScript is not a submission that is the work of only one company, it has umpteen implementations proven and running on umpteen platforms and ECMAScript is also an ISO standard.

You're tying to pretend this is about ECMA standards when it's really about your hatred of Microsoft. Why else single out Mono?

Ahhhhhh. Someone give him a hug. When you're in a tight corner then tell everyone that it's because they hate Microsoft. Listen to yourself.

On a mailing list some time back someone brought this up and the Mono guys sheepsihly stated they had a letter from Microsoft and HP that the RAND licensing would not be revoked. Needless to say, it never materialised. That is what I'm talking about.

The ECMA is pretty much worthless as a standardising body because what I've described is exactly what it allows. It allows RAND licensing for the duration that it is an ECMA standard. ECMAScript being an ECMA specification would be worthless if it wasn't submitted by an independent body and it hadn't also become an ISO standard.

Do you even know what .NET consists of?

.Net is a generic term so asking what it consists of is pointless, but if you're using a CLR then you are using the most important part of it.

If your worry is that Microsoft will call out patent claims then you might as well hide under a rock because anyone can get hit with software patent claims at any time, it isn't a Mono specific threat.

Ahhhhh, and here we have the standard, generic response - tell everyone that this isn't a Microsoft-specific thing.

As I've said, I'm afraid that Microsoft cover you by stating that it applies if you are running within an ECMA compatible CLR. If you were to create the same kind of code or innovation running in a JVM for example, you're OK. Their claims actually state that.

What Microsoft is doing is a very clear "You can do whatever you like, but keep off our turf" message, but you just do not want to see it do you?

Because JavaScript is not a submission that is the work of only one company, it has umpteen implementations proven and running on umpteen platforms and ECMAScript is also an ISO standard.

So what? You say that like it makes a difference and it doesn't. A lot of patents are so generic, that they can be used on different languages, like most of the .NET patents. They can be applied anywhere. Fighting against Mono when the real issue is software patents themselves is just plain ignorant.

Ahhhhhh. Someone give him a hug. When you're in a tight corner then tell everyone that it's because they hate Microsoft. Listen to yourself.

If that's not the reason then explain to me why Mono is more of a threat than any other language or piece of FOSS software when Microsoft has so many patents they can be applied just about anywhere in the FOSS world. You're singling out Mono for a reason but you haven't validated your reason.

What Microsoft is doing is a very clear "You can do whatever you like, but keep off our turf" message, but you just do not want to see it do you?

More Microsoft hatred. The picture is a lot muddier than you think it is. If Microsoft's message is really what you indicate why have they helped with Mono and Moonlight in particular? Why did they release free codecs for Moonlight? Your message seems like one giant conspiracy theory to me.

Why single out Mono then? Javascript is an ECMA standard. There is nothing preventing ANYONE from claiming a patent in Javascript

It still is a difference to know that Microsoft actually HAS patents which are necessarily infringed by Mono and Microsoft is willing to ENFORCE them as soon as it can gain some advantage by this, or some hypothetical patents which may be in the hands of somebody or not who might as well be completely ignorant to all entities who cannot pay large amounts of money.

It still is a difference to know that Microsoft actually HAS patents which are necessarily infringed by Mono and Microsoft is willing to ENFORCE them as soon as it can gain some advantage by this, or some hypothetical patents which may be in the hands of somebody or not who might as well be completely ignorant to all entities who cannot pay large amounts of money.

Have you seen some of the patents? They are generic enough to cover ANY language not just .NET. That's one of the biggest misunderstandings about the whole Mono initiative. People are so afraid of Microsoft's patents without realizing they are just as effective without Mono. Like I said before if you're going to worry about software patents with Mono then you might as well hide under a rock because Mono doesn't make you any more or less susceptible to those patent claims.

You could even make a very strong case that KDE has been developed in incremental steps from KDE 2.0 to KDE 3.5.10 -- that is from October 2000 to August 2008. The change from KDE 1 to KDE 2 was quite comparable to the change from KDE 3 to KDE 4; nonetheless the impression that everything was thrown away and developed from scratch is quite wrong. Someone really ought to do some research how much code has been kept over the years and through all transitions, but it is considerable.

But to really succeed KDE needs a distro that will commit to making KDE4 shine.

Kubuntu is not that distro. I am running Jaunty beta and KDE4 is still utterly broken (to the point where I stopped filing bugs.)

Mandriva and Suse and maybe even Fedora do a better job than Canonical with KDE (not hard, because JR is the Canonical employee working on Kubuntu.)

But even those distros are not good enough. KDE4 needs a distro that is commited to KDE and KDE only like Ubuntu is commited to Gnome. With stable polished supported releases that just work (remember the broken BT stack in Kubuntu 8.10?).

Konqi with webkit should be the default and GTK apps should have Qt theming etc.

Despite hundreds of distros there is no such thing for KDE at the moment.

I don't believe you at all. You cannot have missed, over the years,the endless whining about names starting with a k (though the whiners are apparently fine with names starting with an i, an x, a g or a w).

Somehow I did miss all of it, and all other prefixes bother me also. I dislike the names iTunes and iPhoto just as much as I dislike KOffice and KRunner.

I don't mind it when they come up with a regular name that happens to have a K in it, like Amarok or Okular or even Kaffeine. I just think it's sloppy when names only consist of a generic terms prefixed by a letter.

I don't think there has been a single story about KDE on OSNews, Slashdot, Ars Technica or pretty much anywhere that did not have a thread or two with people complaining about the k prefix. (Which, after all, is just the conventional way of naming applications used on Unix in the last decade of the previous millennium, when KDE was started.)

I don't doubt there were people complaining but I missed all of it because I don't usually frequent Linux/KDE discussion forums. I only read the articles on Ars, never the comments. I don't read Slashdot at all and I have only recently began to read the comments on OSnews due to having a bit more free time.

But to really succeed KDE needs a distro that will commit to making KDE4 shine.

There are a few distros that focus only on KDE. One is Chakra. It's an Arch-based distro by the KDEmod people. I've never used it, but KDEmod is very well recieved since the KDE 3 days.
Another one is Pardus. It's a Turkish distro, but everything is also available in Englisch etc.

I think that openSUSE is still the best distro with KDE, but it's not KDE-exclusive.

Kubuntu is not that distro. I am running Jaunty beta and KDE4 is still utterly broken (to the point where I stopped filing bugs.)

Indeed. Kubuntu sucks big time.

Mandriva and Suse and maybe even Fedora do a better job than Canonical with KDE

I hope you just forgot the word "only" after "the". Jonathan Riddell is a great guy. He helps KDE a lot. He's just overworked.
Canonical BTW just hired the Gwenview developer to work on their new notification system.
Of course, despite Canonical's often repeated "We fully support KDE" crap, Canonical starts to work on this months after the GNOME version.

Konqi with webkit should be the default.

No. Konqueror should not be installed at all. There are other QtWebKit browsers with greater potential (Arora, rekonq).

I'm pleased that the press if finally grasping (and more importantly: spreading) the idea behind the KDE4's development. Although GNOME still has many nice aces in it's sleeve (like GomeDo and AWN) it's already visible that KDE is gaining incredible momentum and is well prepared for the upcoming years.

but neither of those things are exactly original. I'll be the last person to say kde4 is original, but they at least are trying out things with a unique kde4 flavour. Some things might be better some worse, but at least they're not clones

Well, some may be clones and some may be not. I could swear I have seen those transparent desktop widget thingies somewhere else... And KDE has often prided on looking more like Windows (at least in KDE3 time -- dunno about now, I've never used Vista).

I think the development/release methodology adopted by the KDE team for the KDE 4 series would have worked a lot better if they had been able to accurately predict how the distros would respond to it.

It doesn't matter how unfinished KDE 4.0 was, if no large Linux distros had incorporated it fully into their distro and just used it for testing as the KDE team recommended then it wouldn't have been "inflicted" upon some end users in the way that it was. See Linus Torvalds for example, (IIRC) he uses Fedora, and he got an early KDE 4 pushed upon him, and seeing it as too incomplete for his needs, he decided to switch to Gnome. Now the Fedora guys IMO should have held onto KDE 3 for their main users, and offered KDE 4 as an optional testing/preview update. Then there would have been fewer issues.

However, now we see that the distros do not work like this; one cannot just say "this isn't really ready for the wider masses" and necessarily expect the downstream folks to obey those wishes. Maybe if the KDE team had been a little more canny they could have predicted this and delayed the release of 4.0 a bit, still releasing it somewhat early to get the ball rolling but in more a complete state than it was.

Let me just end this by saying that I'm a big fan of KDE and a user for 6 years or so, and that actually I thought 4.0 was fine for my uses and I understand what the KDE team were trying to do with that. Really the distros should have given it a more thoughtful evaluation and not just deployed it indiscriminately as some of them did. But they didn't and maybe the KDE team were not as realistic as they could have been in failing to predict this.

P.S. Arch Linux, my distro of choice held off the upgrade till 4.1 I think it was. So my distro is better than yours. So there!

I know some operating systems and APIs that were evolutionary and they are till they were incapable to perform:
Databases: they stride to be compatible at least with 4 major versions in back, means around 10-12 years of software time
OSs: Windows 9x (Windows 3.1 architecture a mix between DOS and some graphical API) Windows NT, OS X, GNOME
Toolkits:
QT4 have 3 years before KDE4 to happend and 4 years before happen to be stable
GDI (even is Plus or not) it have an architecture that is from 1985
Java it have itself 15 years in industry
C++ (with C heritage) is again a very old language.

What means that "remodeling": it means that some fundations of the project, are not viable.

Considering which means GNOME today, is really a thing that is mostly targets the enterprise: a stable API, most things are added without break the past (till GNOME 2.30, means aroud 7.5 years after the first release which is pretty a good record for GNOME).

Frankly GNOME 2 is not GNOME 2.0. As matter of fact it has a huge amount of improvements: integrated search API, changed filesystem (GFVS), graphics are using Cairo, suport for composite graphics (via metacity and Compiz), added a lot of enterprise grade tools (like Ekiga, Pessulus, PolicyKit), FreeDesktop integration, DBUS/Hal integration. Also GNOME 3.0 will only happen after a stabilization. There is project Ridley: http://live.gnome.org/ProjectRidley

So jumping to GNOME 3 will not be as disruptive and a huge leap also. What will be the most visible user-changes: new theme engine, to make easier to be integrated in 3rd party applications, GNOME Shell and Vala (a language that remove the ugliness of C and GLib programming in it's most parts).

What will happen if Thom will make a review and it happen to hate the GNOME Shell, or don't like the theme engine or he starts programming and find a lot of bugs in Vala environment? His entire written application will work with minimalist of change using old libraries (excluding he don't use a lot of deprecated things, but he have still 1 year and a half to remove them).

Also, having a disruptive "break the past", means always break the present: there is Mono (which is in itself a big project), there is a great integration already of GTK with JavaScript, Webkit, Python (or Py3k), already existing IDEs (Anjuta and MonoDevelop), most Java applications targets GTK. What means breaking them today? Would you handle the risk being let's say RedHat to use the new GNOME in your Enterprise Linux!?

So for me seems not an apple to apples comparison.

This development model reminds me on Vista, still Vista was not so disruptive as KDE4. Vista by breaking things and habbits adds a hate in review for around 1 year.
The Leopard adds to experience and simplify (but not change how looks it's Control Panel component). And for sure have mostly positive reviews.

Well, the mac OS X model is a lot like the KDE one - mac OS X was a complete rewrite of Mac OS 9, even more so than KDE 4 was a rewrite of KDE 3. Since then they did incremental but often still strong and backwards incompattible improvements. Again, KDE will be even more conservative than Mac OS X in this regard, as the KDE 4 series won't break backwards compatibility and will be around for at many years, like KDE 3 was (over 6 years stable API).

As much as we can talk about KDE vs Gnome and which one is making the big changes - the most important part is the applications native to the environment and their underlying quality. A user only plays with windows for a little bit and eye-candy only goes so far. I would like to see more investment (time-wise or otherwise) in the applications users find to be critical.

I personally like Gnome and just want to see it become faster and more refined. However, more importantly I want some real time spent in the applications and add the features to keep them competitive with their MS and OSX counterparts.

As much as we can talk about KDE vs Gnome and which one is making the big changes - the most important part is the applications native to the environment and their underlying quality. A user only plays with windows for a little bit and eye-candy only goes so far. I would like to see more investment (time-wise or otherwise) in the applications users find to be critical.

I don't know what etc. is, but I'm sure I can find it for you with a bit more definition.

I personally like Gnome and just want to see it become faster and more refined. However, more importantly I want some real time spent in the applications and add the features to keep them competitive with their MS and OSX counterparts.

"I tried 2 days ago the latest version of KDE4, im not pleased at all."
An update to the beta of kubuntu 9.04 I was using made the system unbootable (something to do with udev and the kernel version) so I spend the day working on another PC running ubuntu 8.04. I was not pleased at all.

What's my point? None, other then personal experience from ones own biased perspective are not all that useful.

"I tried 2 days ago the latest version of KDE4, im not pleased at all." An update to the beta of kubuntu 9.04 I was using made the system unbootable (something to do with udev and the kernel version) so I spend the day working on another PC running ubuntu 8.04. I was not pleased at all. What's my point? None, other then personal experience from ones own biased perspective are not all that useful.

even so...It would be great if there was a distro that had kde 1st class and gnome 2nd. There are plenty in the reverse (and yes, kubuntu doesn't count).

All distros that put effort and major support into kde all advertise that they are desktop env. agnostic. It may just be that the reality is that they need to support gnome to have any chance at things like enterprise, but still, it would be nice...

even so...It would be great if there was a distro that had kde 1st class and gnome 2nd. There are plenty in the reverse (and yes, kubuntu doesn't count).

All distros that put effort and major support into kde all advertise that they are desktop env. agnostic. It may just be that the reality is that they need to support gnome to have any chance at things like enterprise, but still, it would be nice...

The historical problem is that QT was always licensed GPL or PAY on Linux with Mac and Win being only PAY. For Distros GTK and Gnome started off LGPL, allowing proprietary software to be written on any of the platforms, in fact Gnome was a direct result of the QT licensing.

Now that QT is licensed LGPL too, it should start picking up steam. I always felt KDE was more feature complete than Gnome, but Gnome did a better job with polish. Gnome is more consistent, but hard for users to modify outside the "sandbox" they give you. On the other hand KDE (at least the 3.x series) could be reconfigured to mimic whatever you wanted it to out-of-the-box. Windows, Mac, Gnome...

My biggest problem with KDE is that there was no "KDE" identity, no community (like Ubuntu is for Gnome) that made a good, distinctive design for laptop, netbook, & server and then enforced the HIG across all the "K" apps. All the distros I used only "rebranded" KDE to copy another OS... never giving it it's "OWN" feel, let alone between distros. Now that they've broken KDE4 badly from the past, and added the raw foundation for new and exciting tools that other OSes may not have yet, now is the time for a distro to step up and lead KDE someplace new... that's something missing from Linux distros in general though.

Slackware, Mandriva, OpenSuse, PCLinuxOS, Ark Linux, Red Flag Linux, Pardux Linux, Alt Linux - besides Red Hat "the desktop is not important" and Ubuntu "We do marketing before anything else", KDE is still going strong. Asia, Russia, South America, Turkey and East Europe - 90% of the linux desktops you'll find there are KDE based. How about 50 million Brazil users in one deployment? The Russian school system will move to KDE desktops, the turkish government doesn't sponsor a KDE-only distro for nothing etc etc...

I'm neither a Gnome nor KDE user, I use E17 here. However what annoys me about KDE is that KDE applications seem to be designed to only be running on a KDE desktop. Starting any KDE application usually takes forever on my machine, because of all the KDE libs that are being loaded. This makes me try to avoid KDE apps, although some are superior to the Gnome/GTK equivalents (e.g. digikam). Gnome apps on the other hand are quite different, for one it is not clear what is a Gnome and what's a GTK app, because although some GTK apps use Gnome desktop features they run fine without them.
This also brings me to my second point. Most applications which are not made for a specific desktop are GTK apps, why I get the impression that there's hardly any QT but non-KDE apps around. I'm actually quite interested in the technology behind QT and I believe it is currently a lot better than GTK but there's just no apps if I don't want to use KDE.

Most applications which are not made for a specific desktop are GTK apps, why I get the impression that there's hardly any QT but non-KDE apps around. I'm actually quite interested in the technology behind QT and I believe it is currently a lot better than GTK but there's just no apps if I don't want to use KDE.

KDE applications seem to be designed to only be running on a KDE desktop. Starting any KDE application usually takes forever on my machine, because of all the KDE libs that are being loaded.

Well, that is done on purpose... not to annoy you, but the tight integration within the KDE eco system. KDE takes a bit longer to start than GNOME and according to an article that I've read a few weeks ago it also uses more RAM initially.
A result of that is that many KDE applications load quite fast -- much of the needed stuff is already in memory. There are a few exceptions (KOrganizer takes forever to load), but overall it's true.

"KDE applications seem to be designed to only be running on a KDE desktop. Starting any KDE application usually takes forever on my machine, because of all the KDE libs that are being loaded.

Well, that is done on purpose... not to annoy you, but the tight integration within the KDE eco system. KDE takes a bit longer to start than GNOME and according to an article that I've read a few weeks ago it also uses more RAM initially.
A result of that is that many KDE applications load quite fast -- much of the needed stuff is already in memory. There are a few exceptions (KOrganizer takes forever to load), but overall it's true. "

Well that design decision tells me that my impression is right, KDE applications are made only for the KDE desktop. That makes the applications really unsuitable for any non-KDE environment. I don't want to 10s longer for digikam to start because it loads the KDE components just by Amorak, just because I might use it. I think it's a stupid design decision as well, it limits the scope of KDE apps, and the same job is better done by something like the preload daemon.

I actually agree with both of you but would say that the KDE approach is the right way. If you're going to load all the applications you need for your workflow, you're better off the more libraries they share. It also helps them be more consistent for UI and functionality.

This harks back to the silly obsession with boot times. Boot time is much more easily skipped by the user in favor of other activity; don't you want a more snappy environment and coherent design after it's loaded? It's like buying bulk when you know you're going to use all the goods. For my kind of desktop usage, that makes good sense.

KDE applications are made only for the KDE desktop. That makes the applications really unsuitable for any non-KDE environment.

That's not true. Even when I use GNOME or anything else, I still use Kopete and Kontact and it works really well.

I don't want to 10s longer for digikam to start because it loads the KDE components just by Amorak, just because I might use it.

You make it sould like Amarok loads lots of exotic stuff not useful for anything else. Which KDE components used by Amarok are not used by digiKam? Both surely use the directory browser. Both have tool bars. Both have configurable keyboard shortcuts. Both support tagging of files. The list goes on.
That doesn't mean that digiKam loads everything used by Amarok or vice versa. Amarok doesn't load the KiPi plugins for lots of image formats and digiKam doesn't load Amarok's MySQL Emedded database.

I think it's a stupid design decision as well, it limits the scope of KDE apps

It's not stupid. This approach reduces the overall memory foot print.
BTW, real GNOME apps work more or less the same. For example I use GNOME's NetworkManager applet, because the KDE one was not mature when I set up my laptop and now all WLAN passwords are already saved in GNOME's Keyring and I'm too lazy to re-enter them in the now-mature KDE Network Management plasmoid.
nm-applet alone takes roughly 30-60 seconds to start (subjective, I didn't benchmark), because it's the first GNOME app I launch after log-in.

the same job is better done by something like the preload daemon.

Whaat? A stupid preload daemon is a better design decision?
If you want that make your own preload "daemon": Run any background KDE program in autostart.Yakuake (a terminal instpired by command consoles found in games like Quake), Kopete (IMO the best X11 instant messenger and the 2nd best IM overall after Adium for Mac), Amarok (music player), and KMail/Kontact (e-mail/PIM).

You wrote "just by Amarok", but I think you meant to wrote "used by Amarok" -- otherwise your sentence doesn't make much sense, grammatically. And, of course, even with that emendation, it doesn't make much sense: Digikam loads only the kde components it needs, nothing else. If you start Amarok after Digikam, the extra components Amarok needs are loaded. KDE's libraries are pretty modular these days.

It's the same with any big application that doesn't try to reinvent everything itself, like Evolution, which used to have code to convert between rgb and hsv so it could draw shadows on buttons, or Mozilla, which had, last time I checked, its own math library implementation, or OpenOffice with its own component and widget framework. Though I don't think those apps are shining examples of starting in under 10 seconds...

XFCE is quietly taking up ground where the two heavy weights leave off... the area of those that want a responsive fast and functional desktop.

I've been with KDE 3.5x, and got sick of the sluggishness. I went to Gnome. Pretty but not much faster. Tried E17. Fun if you like to fix things constantly. Tried KDE 4.1. Uggh. Tried LXDE. Win95 revisited. Tried OpenBox. Quick but too basic and unconfigurable (ok, I cannot be bothered wading through text files to configure a gui).

XFCE works, and very nicely. You can also run all the Gnome apps to your heart's content. And with compositing enabled it is very pretty.

I don't think Gnome has lost momentum. What is clear is that some parts of it has never been writen an so, part of them and actually being builded. Just see projects such as clutter ( the lack of a gtk/gnome canvas was a very weak point ), webkit, tracker, geoclue and libchamplain or gstreamer and pitivi, gobject-introspection as long as with vala, telepathy, telepathy-tubes for network comunication between remote apps and empathy (which right now supports video/audio conferences) or the new theming code for gtk are just some examples. What finally makes a desktop success are it's applications and for them what is first needed is a good base which basically is what gnome is building.

What finally makes a desktop success are it's applications and for them what is first needed is a good base which basically is what gnome is building.

Developer's 101: Those things you listed are independent libraries, are not written with any common Gnome toolkit or framework, they all look completely different to a developer and it's not clear at all what applications will use what or even what versions will be used by applications running on the same system. It's a mess, basically.

Developer's 101: Those things you listed are independent libraries, are not written with any common Gnome toolkit or framework, they all look completely different to a developer and it's not clear at all what applications will use what or even what versions will be used by applications running on the same system. It's a mess, basically.

These technologies I have mentioned, are mainly being developed by historical contributors to Gnome, and with Gtk/Gnome in mind (all of them use glib for example or apply to the gnome coding style), others, such as webkit can use other libraries like gnome-keyring which is clearly a gnome library and finally there are libraries like gstreamer or telepathy which actually are part of the core libraries of Gnome. Also, being core technologies, is difficult for them to depend on libraries which are supposed to be in upper levels.

"What finally makes a desktop success are it's applications and for them what is first needed is a good base which basically is what gnome is building.

Developer's 101: Those things you listed are independent libraries, are not written with any common Gnome toolkit or framework, they all look completely different to a developer and it's not clear at all what applications will use what or even what versions will be used by applications running on the same system. It's a mess, basically. "

Well that's actually a good thing IMO. Why depend on the huge kdelibs components when you only need, e.g. sound functionality. Especially for a developer, why should I choose a framework which limits my application to essentially only one desktop (see my comments earlier).

Why depend on the huge kdelibs components when you only need, e.g. sound functionality. Especially for a developer, why should I choose a framework which limits my application to essentially only one desktop (see my comments earlier).

I don't understand what weakness it is that you think KDE has that GNOME does not have. GNOME applications are very poor performers under KDE, because they have to load massive GNOME libraries. Applications such as OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird are the same on both KDE and GNOME, because they basically use the libraries of neither.

I don't understand what weakness it is that you think KDE has that GNOME does not have. GNOME applications are very poor performers under KDE, because they have to load massive GNOME libraries. Applications such as OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird are the same on both KDE and GNOME, because they basically use the libraries of neither.

What's the difference?

Massive GNOME libraries? Like what? Glib? It's tiny as are most GNOME libraries. In fact I can't quite figure out what massive library you could be referring to. Firefox and OpenOffice actually can use some GNOME libraries if you want to build support for it.

"I don't understand what weakness it is that you think KDE has that GNOME does not have. GNOME applications are very poor performers under KDE, because they have to load massive GNOME libraries. Applications such as OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird are the same on both KDE and GNOME, because they basically use the libraries of neither. What's the difference?

Massive GNOME libraries? Like what? Glib? It's tiny as are most GNOME libraries. In fact I can't quite figure out what massive library you could be referring to. Firefox and OpenOffice actually can use some GNOME libraries if you want to build support for it. "

What is that list of libraries supposed to represent? They are all separate libraries that are only loaded when needed. It would be near impossilbe to find ANY application that loads ALL of those libraries. In fact most GNOME applications rely on only a small subset of available libraries. It's extremely misleading to state that running a GNOME application is going to lead to loading "Massive" libraries. This simply isn't the case.

Especially for a developer, why should I choose a framework which limits my application to essentially only one desktop (see my comments earlier).

Perhaps, as a "developer", you'd like your application to run on more than one platform.

When all else fails, it's easy to try and connect a line between frameworks and the miserably overused concept of "bloat". This is a popular argument from people that aren't actually developers. But the point of a framework is to make a developer's job easier. That's the sort of thing that will ultimately lead to better applications.

KDE4 apps are portable to Windows and OSX, much in thanks to the cross-platform nature of Qt, and the frameworks in KDE that abstract platform-dependent features. Gnome apps are portable to Windows and OSX as well, but the linux-support layer they will require to run will really underscore your point about questioning why developers would want to develop for "essentially only one desktop".

Well that's actually a good thing IMO. Why depend on the huge kdelibs components when you only need, e.g. sound functionality.

The problem is that applications generally need to get functionality from many different sources (look at the dependency list of an average application), all those libraries look and program differently, and as with brain damage like libegg and libsexy, you get developers depending on different versions of libraries or even copying and pasting code into their application to get what they want and to top it off they all look different to program for.

Like I said.

Especially for a developer, why should I choose a framework which limits my application to essentially only one desktop (see my comments earlier).

Do you really think that's what you're protecting yourself from on a practical level? You're pretty deluded if that's what you think. Writing for Gnome's fifteen dozen libraries does not turn your application into a multi-desktop one I'm afraid.

I've read that the number of GNOME developers stayed roughly the same thoughout the past two or so years, while at the same time the number of KDE developers increased.
I have no idea if that is actually true. Even if it is, it doesn't neccessarily mean that the development of GNOME is slowing down. GNOME as always relied mostly on corporate backing with paid full-time developers (most employed by Ximian/Novell, Sun, and Red Hat) while KDE is a community project with only a few full-time devs.

On one end KDE looks good, but is so heavy to run... then comes gnome and sorry about that but visually it is not that great... I am 100% E17 and for those that will say that it is highly unstable... I am running MoonOS and never had a problem.

But if I had to choose between the two I would say gnome, it seems easier to use for newbies (this is my own view of course).

A bold statement coming from someone who spends as much time here as you do "explaining" why KDE4's slowness isn't really the KDE devs' fault. "

Not at all.

Early on for KDE4 (2006/2007 timeframe) there wasn't KDE slowness, but there was slowness ... it was (largely) graphics driver slowness. It was slow on some systems as a result ... the fact that it was slow only on some systems tells you straight away that it wasn't KDE, but rather the particular underlying systems, that were slow.

That problem is fixed now, and hence, once again, KDE runs (universally) faster than GNOME.

This has recently been amplified considerably now that some popular GNOME distributions (such as Ubuntu and Mint) have started to include Mono.

Put simply, Gnome does not have an application developers' framework and a common set of libraries underpinning it that everything uses, and it never has done. It really doesn't matter what is considered for Gnome 2.3 you can only ever be as good as the tools that you use and stand on. I'm afraid users out there just don't care about fanboys shouting about bloat, simplicity or how 'clean' a desktop is. If it doesn't have the applications and the functionality and doesn't have the tools to build that functionality then you're on the road to nowhere. Having a go at KDE 4.0 isn't going to change that either. XFCE? It sort of fills a niche, but don't make people laugh.

KDE has always had a very good object oriented framework in Qt to build from, it's gone on to another level with 4.x, is squaring up to some of the things you can do visually with Vista and OS X and with Plasma we're finally getting a decent container for developers to write all those little desktop applications and applets that provide the functionality that users want. What new applications can people write with Gnome and how will they go about doing it? Right now, the best way of getting into Gnome and GTK development is with Mono, regardless of how people might feel about it. Gnome need to recognise that to be relevant and they need to either embrace it or put serious work into learning why that is and doing something about it.

Alas, Jack Wallen's 'article' quoted by Byfield just seems to be another sad attempt to stop discussing the elephant in the room, or to stop people from seeing it because he doesn't actually discuss Gnome at all, quite apart from the deliberate inaccuracies. It's only going to get worse for people like him.

There's a lot of things in and around KDE that need improving, but I see no one else at all in the open source desktop world looking ahead and being able to look the proprietary competition in the eye developer-wise, visually or functionally.

If there ever is to be a 'Year of Desktop Linux' then open source desktops need to catch up to proprietary alternatives, not be afraid to try new ideas and make it easy to develop with for their developers. If they can't do that then we need to accept it and then all these silly articles can just end.

Get real - Qt is cross-platform, GTK isn't. Write a slightly non-trivial app, the Qt one will work even on a windows mobile or symbian device, the GTK one needs lots of work to run on win or mac.

Since KDE has been availabe with Qt 4, almost all KDE apps are available on win & Mac thanks to the efforts (parttime!) of 2-3 people for each of the platforms. So, can I run Gedit on Windows? Epiphany? GnomeDo? The desktop or panels? All the games, educational apps? Nope, they haven't been ported. The Gnome dev environment isn't cross-platform, period.

Linux was to slow, we live in the cloud age now. Most people just use their desktops to start their interface to the internet. Apart from office apps most people do everything online (webmail, etc.) through a browser.

Right now, the best way of getting into Gnome and GTK development is with Mono, regardless of how people might feel about it. Gnome need to recognise that to be relevant and they need to either embrace it or put serious work into learning why that is and doing something about it.

Gnome is already quite relevant as it stands - think of it as CDE of 21st century. It's stable and pretty much "ready", improving mostly in incremental fashion.

It doesn't do too bad a job as a window manager and task switcher, even if a little bloated one. They also have some pretty cool stuff brewing, like the javascript based "gnome shell".

But hopefully, they'll keep Mono out of the loop. Focus on beefing up C++ support, take good care of Python support ecosystem, play with Vala and Javascript, consider making Qt a first class Gnome development framework. Just treat that big wooden horse delivery from microsoft at the door with the respect & caution it deserves.

Mono developers will always be collecting leftovers under windows developers table. Some of us are in more of a hurry to start scavenging there, while others are probably better off letting it "play out" for a while and see where it goes. If gnome banked too heavily on Mono, by the time of the first cease & desist or "patent licensing agreement" we will have a glorious, completely free KDE 4.x platform ready to take the refugees.

But hopefully, they'll keep Mono out of the loop. Focus on beefing up C++ support, take good care of Python support ecosystem, play with Vala and Javascript, consider making Qt a first class Gnome development framework. Just treat that big wooden horse delivery from microsoft at the door with the respect & caution it deserves.

This is a good direction for GNOME. C++ rather than C, good integration with Python, Javascript etc, and ditch Mono.

Unfortunately, all of that is a quite good description of KDE4, and the opposite of what is happening with GNOME.

"""
Apple did it with Mac OS X, KDE did it with KDE4, and to a lesser extent, Microsoft did it with Vista
"""

Mmm, and to a very large extent, Gnome did it with Gnome 2.0. We've had 14 editions with incremental (but never ending) progress which was enabled by the great leap in infrastructure that Gnome 2.0 was.

this argument will go back and forth for eon's, I like that fact that KDE took a step into the unknown and i think that those partially to blame are the distro's that jumped right on the 4.0 bandwagon without thinking that 4.0 and 4.1 would suck.

if they didn't trumpet the coming of a new god in KDE 4 there wouldn't have been so much complaining.

XFCE 4.6 really surprised me and i think soon enough it won't just be third but part of the big three in linux DE's.

Personally i use GNOME but it looks like XFCE4 will be the evolutionary desktop for a while with KDE4 getting back up to speed. then with GNOME 3 a year away we'll just have to wait and see.

Seeing the article title, I assumed they would pick Gnome. KDE is still working out the bugs in its latest revision, which was major enough that a.) it still has bugs and b.) it alienated a lot of users

Well, there does seem to be a concerted effort going around trying to make it seem as though a lot of "users" were alienated.

The real fact of the matter, though, is that, in a fashion entirely similar to KDE 4.0, GNOME 2.0 and 2.2 were also broken releases, with most users sticking with GNOME 1.4, until it started to come good with GNOME 2.6.

Where KDE has better technology, though, GNOME has proven stability, and backing from Red Hat, Novell, Sun... Granted, KDE now benefits from Nokia purchasing Trolltech, but I'm betting there's more money in GNOME.

Possibly so. That is why it is being "pushed" ... especially the inclusion of Mono into GNOME. Monied interests behind that, no doubt.

The interesting thing is, in the context of the topic of this thread, while GNOME is increasingly being laboured with Mono overhead, KDE 4.2.x (now including Qt 4.5) is getting slicker and quicker and cleaner all the time at a very encouraging pace.

Meanwhile, Qtcreator/Qt/C++/GCC reportedly lets one develop fast functional, good-looking and cross-platform (but still native) appliactions quickly, and it is now licensed as LGPL.

slackware is technically "no desktop by default" though it leans more KDE. there aren't even any GNOME packages in the default slackware distribution.

Also to the previous post, you say "most distributions" ship GNOME by default, and then only make mention of Ubuntu. Also you can't use Ubuntu/Kubuntu as a basis of comparison as previously mentioned. The reason there is sucha disparity between the two is because Canonical is very biased towards GNOME and invests much more time and resources in that direction. As an OpenSUSE user, I can tell you that a well integrated KDE4 desktop is just every bit as clean and shiny as a GNOME one, someone just has to take the time and effort to make it that way.

Don't forget that PC-BSD has had KDE as its default desktop for over three years now, and it has quite possibly the easiest entry barrier for new users of any UNIX distribution so long as you aren't trying to run it on a laptop. 7.1 is shaping up to be a fine release, and will run KDE 4.2 on top of FreeBSD 7.2.

Dont forget the unknown-but-millions-of-users distro's like Red Flag Linux, Pardux Linux, Alt Linux - besides Red Hat "the desktop is not important" and Ubuntu "We do marketing before anything else", KDE is still going strong. Asia, Russia, South America, Turkey and East Europe - 90% of the linux desktops you'll find there are KDE based. How about 50 million Brazil users in one deployment? The Russian school system will move to KDE desktops, the turkish government doesn't sponsor a KDE-only distro for nothing etc etc...

Just focussing on the few well-known-in-europe&US-distro's means leaving out lots of good stuff...

Well, here's a list of things I would like to see in my future desktop computer running Linux and either Gnome or KDE:

* Faster, faster, faster. I want speed improvements. I want snappy, quick things that truly impresses me. I want it too be quick and snappy for a long time. Over several days. Even though I have 3 to 6 tabs open in Firefox at any given time or I run compiz with a desktop cube. My computer should not get slow just because I use it. Some days I think of the good old days when I would come before the pron jpeg would have finished loading. Isn't slugginess a thing of the past already? If we could maintain the speed of today it would be great on the computers of tomorrow. There must be a way to add functionality without compromising speed and responsiveness.

* Unity. I want it too look good from all angels. The minor requirement is that all icons are consistent. I would also like to see a good theme for both KDE and Gnome in a distro (try to make KDE apps look Gnomeish in Ubuntu for example (BY DEFAULT, I don't wanna do it post install)).

* Focus on the applications. I use apps, not a OS. I want a good backup system (with GUI, small agents on remote machines, etc). Focus on GIMP (I am a photographer, you can't blame me). A REAL video converter. I have tried Avidemux and a lot of other stuff that I found via Google. None of them did ever once convert a mkv file into a working mp4 video that played on my PS3. Not one time did it work. Same goes for Windows, except it's the other way around.

* Real translation. Everything should be translated. It looks unprofessional. I tip here is to look at translation on Launchpad. It is as easy as typing a word into a textline and submit. If translation is easy more people will do it. And we need more translation.

* Real testing. Come on.. KDE4, PulseAudio, ATI drivers, etc. In some cases there could have been more testing and better QA before release. In other cases users affected with a huge bug should have been warned prior to update (for example, if I choose to upgrade my Mandriva, I use ATI and it will totally break after the upgrade, it is not enough just to put some text on the release notes on the website. There should be a popup/notification! "Your system will render unusable and irritate you, your screen will look weird and it will be much slower. Continue?"

Everything I just said should be taken with a grain of salt. I am just one user and my opinion is my own and only my own. I myself have found many points inside this text that I could easily challenge. But I don't really care today (maybe some other day), my point now was just that. To tell what I want.

So please, don't highlight details, I will only respond to comments that recognises the big picture (of course, you may highlight flaws in there, just keep out of the details).

* Unity. I want it too look good from all angels. The minor requirement is that all icons are consistent. I would also like to see a good theme for both KDE and Gnome in a distro (try to make KDE apps look Gnomeish in Ubuntu for example (BY DEFAULT, I don't wanna do it post install)).

Qt 4.5 also offers that. If your distro doesn't do it right, blame them for broken packaging.

A REAL video converter. I have tried Avidemux and a lot of other stuff that I found via Google. None of them did ever once convert a mkv file into a working mp4 video that played on my PS3.

Then it's your fault for not knowing which specific sub-set of MPEG features are found on the PS3. HandBrake offers a PS3 preset, btw.

* Real translation. Everything should be translated. It looks unprofessional. I tip here is to look at translation on Launchpad. It is as easy as typing a word into a textline and submit. If translation is easy more people will do it. And we need more translation.

Canonical also doesn't put translations upstream. Putting tranlation work into Launchpad is like throwing gold bars into a black hole. The only good way to support the tranlation teams is by going directly to the software project. Big projects like KDE have translation teams for each language (usually one team for apps and one for documentation). Contact them and ask where you can help.

KDE has also a very easy to use translation app called Lokalize. It's just as easy as Launchpad, just without the web browser.

* Real testing. Come on..

When you use distros that don't have the man-power to do the testing, it's your fault. Debian, SUSE, and Red Hat have this man power. I've excluded Fedora from that list (even though it's by Red Hat), because it's bleeding edge on purpose.
Canonical has a lot of hype around it, but it does not have a lot of man-power. Up until now there's only a single person employed by Canonical to do everything KDE-related (Jonathan Riddell). Only recently there was a second person hired (the Gwenview developer), but he only works on the new notification system and his work won't show up until Kubuntu 9.10.

So please, don't highlight details, I will only respond to comments that recognises the big picture

I don't care whether or not I recieve the blessing of an answer by you. :-P

I want more speed. I want speed that doesn't exist today. I want amazing speed that just leaves me astonished.

I am not saying that speed today is the worst ever. I am just saying that in my personal utopia everything is amazingly fast and that speed should be high priority. The goal should be that utopia. I know it is, I just want to put more emphasis on it as a priority. That's why it was first on the list.

* Unity. I want it too look good from all angels. The minor requirement is that all icons are consistent. I would also like to see a good theme for both KDE and Gnome in a distro (try to make KDE apps look Gnomeish in Ubuntu for example (BY DEFAULT, I don't wanna do it post install)).

Qt 4.5 also offers that. If your distro doesn't do it right, blame them for broken packaging.

I am not looking for someone to blame. The closest I have to "Mrs/Mr Average User" is my mom. She wouldn't care who's fault it is and just blame "Linux". It does not matter who is to blame. I am just saying I want more consistency and a more unified desktop experience.

A REAL video converter. I have tried Avidemux and a lot of other stuff that I found via Google. None of them did ever once convert a mkv file into a working mp4 video that played on my PS3.

Then it's your fault for not knowing which specific sub-set of MPEG features are found on the PS3.

It's bad to blame the user for inferior technical knowledge. I did a lot of trying to get the audio and video encoded with the right codecs using different tools. I stopped when I got video working but couldn't find out why the sound did not work. I even compared stuff like bitrates and resolution to those of working files downloaded from the Playstation Store.

Anyway, that's soooo OT right now. My point is: the user should not need to know that stuff anyway. It should be a matter of just point-and-click. That's how you can do it in Windows, I would like that in Linux. Just a personal wish, I am tried of doing technical stuff that only rewards me with the ability to store a video on my PS3. It's not worth it and it's a monkey-job that my computer should handle for me, so I can concentrate on fun, technical stuff instead.

HandBrake offers a PS3 preset, btw.

Oh, I haven't heard of HandBrake. Cool, I'll check it out. Thanks!

* Real translation. Everything should be translated. It looks unprofessional. I tip here is to look at translation on Launchpad. It is as easy as typing a word into a textline and submit. If translation is easy more people will do it. And we need more translation.

No! Don't use Launchpad! It's a waste of time!
First of all, GNOME and KDE are already translated into many languages. It's launchpad that corrupts the translations!

I used the Launchpad translation as an example of how the translation should be done. It should be a webpage with a textline. I don't care that address that webpage has, as long as I can easily find my program and start translating in a matter of seconds.

Big projects like KDE have translation teams for each language (usually one team for apps and one for documentation). Contact them and ask where you can help.

Again, I don't want to send mails, ask people. I want a webpage where I can see a line that is not translated and I can type in a suggestion and know that it will probably get into an update in the near future. Let everyone who has spare time translate without any hussle.

KDE has also a very easy to use translation app called Lokalize. It's just as easy as Launchpad, just without the web browser.

What if I want to translate Firefox or GIMP? Or what if I am at a Windows computer that doesn't allow custom installations?

Going back to my utopia there would be a unified system for translation where a single point where a normal user without any prior experience can just send in suggestions of translation to a translation team, for any program that he uses, be it Gnome, KDE or anything else.

* Real testing. Come on..

When you use distros that don't have the man-power to do the testing, it's your fault. Debian, SUSE, and Red Hat have this man power. I've excluded Fedora from that list (even though it's by Red Hat), because it's bleeding edge on purpose.
Canonical has a lot of hype around it, but it does not have a lot of man-power. Up until now there's only a single person employed by Canonical to do everything KDE-related (Jonathan Riddell). Only recently there was a second person hired (the Gwenview developer), but he only works on the new notification system and his work won't show up until Kubuntu 9.10.

And even once more you miss my point. I am not blaming anyone! I am just saying want I want to see improved and the first thing you do is pointing fingers and telling me who is to blame for that. As a user I don't care. I just want it done. This is just something that I see as a priority issue and in new light of your comment I guess I should add to my utopia: more staff for everyone!

Now I am not bored anymore. Thank you and have a nice day. I know I will.

EDIT: Oh, and by the way. I am a little surprised that you went through a whole post with the single mission of taking all my problems and telling me who's fault it is. Sometimes it's my fault, or the distros, or the packagers. I don't like blame. I like progress and improvements. But in this case I was merely telling my biggest issues and I would appreciate it if you could tell me yours.